They said there'll be snow at Christmas. They said There'll be peace on earth, but instead it just kept on raining, a veil of tears for the virgin's birth. I remember one Christmas morning, a winter's light and a distant choir and the peel of a bell and that Christmas tree smell and their eyes full of tinsel and fire.
They sold me a dream of Christmas. They sold me a silent night and they told me a fairy story till I believed in the Israelite and I believed in Father Christmas, and I looked at the sky with excited eyes till I woke with a yawn in the first light of dawn. And I saw him through his disguise. I wish you a hopeful Christmas.
I wish you a brave New Year. All anguish, pain and sadness. Leave your heart and let your road be clear. They said there'll be snow at Christmas. They said There'll be peace on earth. Hallelujah. Noel, be it heaven or hell, the Christmas you get you deserve.
You may not have heard that song by Greg Lake because it only reached number 95 in the billboard top 100, and that was 50 years ago. But in the UK it was a massive hit. It reached number two and was only stopped from being the Christmas number one by Bohemian Rhap. When I hear it, I still get a shiver down my spine.
The shock of unexpected conflict still pierces my soul. I was only 12 when this story of one man's loss of his childhood beliefs dominated the radio, but I understood it. At least I understood the words, but not how someone could write them. Here is a man who has lost his faith, not just in Father Christmas at 12.
I too had lost that faith, but also unimaginably in the Israelite, a veil of tears for the virgin's birth. How could he sing this? I wondered in my 12-year-old innocence, how could he lose his faith in Jesus? And yet these words were set to a catchy Christmasy tune with a whimsical rhythm, with jingly bells and a children's choir.
It was memorable and hummable. In the video of the song, Greg Lake is Alone in a desert in North Africa, brooding wrestling with his soul as he sings. He looks like a man who has gone into the wilderness to look for something and not found it. This three minute bite of entertainment jarred, the music was jolly, but the visuals were mournful and the words.
Those words to a 12-year-old were deeply troubling. For me, Christmas was full of promise. It was my favorite time of year. I loved it. That year, I was 12. It snowed on Christmas day. The only time I experienced snow on Christmas Day until I immigrated to Michigan.
When I entered my teens, the Christmas magic subsided for a while only to be revived in my twenties when I had children of my own. Once again, I was enthralled by Christmas and the promise it held, I was determined that my kids would believe in the promise. Then after a few more years. On my first Christmas as a single parent, I worried, obsessed, shopped, panicked, cooked, and burst a gut to make it perfect for them.
And at the end of the day when it was all over and I tucked them into bed, I sat down and wept a veil of tears, not for the virgin's birth, but for the pain of promises broken.
Now, 50 years on, I am still troubled by Greg Lake's song, but now I can understand his dashed hopes, his shattered dreams, his despair, that the kind of Christmas he believed in and the kind of savior he had trusted, did not meet his naive expectations. When we are shaken out of the wonder of childhood, flung into the questioning of adolescence and finally dumped into the cold despair of fully formed adult skepticism, Santa becomes impossible.
Elves, absurd peace on earth, a sick joke, and the Israelite who can believe in the Israelite when they have lived through dozens of dismal Christmases. Some marred by conflict, some ruined by loneliness. Many endured through gritted, teeth promises, promises. Its advent the season of promises. This advent, the Old Testament lessons are all from the prophet Isaiah, as is the Old Testament lesson on Christmas night, and so I thought we'd shuffle up next to this old prophet for the next four or five weeks and walk with him while he endures the dark, but waits for the light.
We'll watch as the promise takes root and grows, and then celebrate as it bursts into fulfillment on Christmas night. I love Isaiah because he has a vivid imagination. Somehow in the dark, he sees light. Somehow in the depths of despair, he clings to hope. So get ready to be inspired. Promises. Promises. God shall judge between the nations and shall arbitrate For many peoples, they shall beat their swords into plow shares and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation shall not lift up sword against nation. Neither shall they learn war anymore. Oh, house of Jacob, come Let us walk in the light of the Lord.
Greg Lake's song is built on nostalgia. Isaiah's song is built on promise in the Anglican communion. We get ready for Christmas, not by reminiscing about childhood memories. We get ready to celebrate by looking at the future. Because the world is not on a runaway train hurtling. Towards the end of the track, there's a driver in the cab, and our future is sure the promise is uttered and we know it will be dare we believe this.
The problem with some promises is that we can misunderstand them. We look at the real world at Advent 2025, with its anxiety, its fear, its suffering, its sin, it's violence, it's discord, and Isaiah's promise does not match the reality. Where are the plowshares and the pruning hooks? Oh, there are plenty of swords and spears, the tools of death.
And 2,700 years after Isaiah prophesied, they'd be transformed into tools of cultivation. The only change they've gone through is to more efficient and devilish means of death. Where is the peace? Isaiah predicts? Where is the security? Where is the savior?
The last few mornings we've had a visitor at around 5:00 AM It's too early for visitors, especially ones that sit in the tree outside your bedroom window and sing. If I were motivated enough, I'd find out more about this annoying visitor who wakes me up and won't let me snooze. But I just wish she'd go away.
I think she's lost her mind. It's still dark and she's singing, go back to sleep. But actually it's me who's got things wrong. This early bird is seeing things clearly, so clearly that she spots things I can't, things that no human can spot. She sees the dawn before it arrives. There is probably no such species as an advent bird, but if there were, she'd be it.
The advent bird tells me to wake up. It's still dark, but wake up. It's still dark, but dawn is coming. It's still dark, but daylight is about to burst upon us. It's still dark, but today might be the day when swords are hammered in plow shares and spears molded into pruning hooks. It's still dark, but you need to get up.
There's work to do. There's a gospel to preach, a world to serve, a Christ To follow.
This next month, Isaiah will give us rich images of the new world that is coming. Our task, if you are brave enough, is to let it change your heart and change your outlook. It's dark, but the day is coming. And here's the truth that Isaiah tells us this first Sunday of Advent, the kingdom of peace will not come through human effort.
If the swords and the spears are going to be melted down and reshaped into farming tools, then it can only happen through the work of God. The human race periodically has moments of disastrous arrogance when it thinks it can solve the world's problems, find the answer to death, sickness want, and the dread emptiness inside all of us.
It happened at the turn of the 20th century, but that false hope died in the trenches of World War I. It happened again in the roaring twenties when economic prosperity was engulfed by the Great Depression, which helped set the scene for World War II and on it went through the 20th century and into the first quarter of the 21st.
We still kid ourselves that we can create God's perfect future through technology, innovation, science or politics. Now, humans can do incredible things. We can create immense good, but swords and spears and technology and elections will not create the plow shares and the pruning hooks. That age of peace is the work of God.
Swords in the plow shares spears into pruning hooks. That is the promise. Isaiah proclaims it, the advent bird sings it, and we dare to believe it because without that hope, what do we have? How can we laugh? What can we celebrate? How do we even get outta bed? If this is all there is, if there is no good and powerful creator with a plan that cannot fail, then all we can do is sit with the singer in the wilderness to wrestle with our souls to try to invent some meaning in lives that have no intrinsic meaning.
To pretend that there's a purpose in lives that have no objective purpose, we can sit in the desert with the singer, but I prefer to walk with the promise of Isaiah. We prefer to live in the hope of the second coming of Christ, and we do that by basing our lives on the facts of his first coming. God's kingdom came in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.
His kingdom is here and now, but not fully. The decisive event has occurred. The future is certain. The outcome is in no doubt. Death is defeated. Evil is vanquished. Suffering and violence are terminally sick. Our task is to live in that truth. So we disarm what has become weaponized, where speech, where our speech has become weaponized, disarm, where our motives have become weaponized, disarm, where our actions have been weaponized, disarm where our structures and systems of our world, the culture of our workplaces, our family spaces, and our social circles.
Anywhere where those systems and cultures and conventions have become weaponized. Hear the word of the Lord, disarm. And take those old useless weapons and turn them into tools of cultivation, plant and grow. Love, service forgiveness. We're going to be doing this for all eternity. So let's start now. Amen.